Gwynn Raimondi, MA

This is the life

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I’m sitting out on my deck, working. Writing blog posts, responding to emails, connecting with my tribe. It’s almost 9pm at the moment, and I’m feeling refreshed as the breeze gently blows across my skin, I hear the creek softly gurgling, a few last birds chirping.  As I look into our little fairy forest beyond our backyard I breathe a sigh of content.

We’ve lived in this home for almost three years now. This is our third summer here. We have a gorgeous creek that runs through our backyard and a little fairy forest, full of trees and green. Our actual yard is the home to both The Mudpit of Pure Joy and some lovely green ground cover as well as a large covered deck. It’s a peaceful and grounding place to be. This summer is the first time I have started to fully take advantage of it.

In fact, it’s only been in the last couple weeks that I’ve started inviting my girl to play with me in the creek (as opposed to her begging me to go down there and me saying no). It’s only been the last couple weeks that I have started sitting out on our deck after dinner to work. I’m finding the space so deeply grounding and peaceful and I’m feeling a shift within me as I connect to our home, our backyard, to nature.

I’ve always known the beauty of this space, from the first moment I walked into this yard to look at it as a potential new home for us. The first thing I saw was our backyard, hearing the creek and I fell in-love – I didn’t care what the inside of the townhouse looked like, I knew in those first few moments this was our new home. I sighed a huge breath of release and grounding in those first moments of meeting our new home, as I surrendered to the changes in our life at the time, as I surrendered to the Universe, as I surrendered to the knowledge that everything was going to work out just fine.

I haven’t savored our back yard since those first moments almost three years ago. I haven’t allowed myself to step into its beauty and let it ground me. I haven’t allowed myself this peace, this joy. Not regularly, not more than two or three times over the last almost three years.

I wasn’t ready before  now.  I haven’t allowed this peace, this beauty into my daily life before now because I was still wrapped in a cloak of unworthiness and a sense of lack. Sitting here on my deck, there is no way I can not see the beauty of our home, of my life. There is no way I cannot feel gratitude for every gift our home gives us.

It can be overwhelming, the beauty. It can be blinding. Stepping into the abundance that we are each graced with, the absolute gorgeousness that surrounds us, that is us, can feel like drowning. It is so different from everything we are ever told our life would be, our life could be, this beauty.

We get lost in feeling undeserving. We get lost in fear of losing it. We get lost in wondering why me? We get lost over and over and find ourselves constantly searching outside, beyond the present moment.

When we slow down and breathe, we find ourselves, we find the beauty. When we release the shame, the fear, we open the space for the beauty, the peace, the joy to enter. 

Coming to this place in my life, finding this beauty, accepting this absolute gorgeousness of the present moment and slowing down to savor it has taken time. It’s taken deep introspection. It’s taken acceptance of my imperfections and my humanity. It’s taken stepping into both vulnerability and humility and staying there, releasing defenses and excuses and fear.

I’m seeing the beauty that is my home, that is my life because I’m ready to see it now. Because I have done the work, gotten to the other side of the pain and trauma. I have peeled enough layers, gone deep enough into myself to see the glow from within and it’s reflection in my world.

The work is life long. It has felt like almost daily for the past few weeks, new triggers have cropped up, new opportunities for growth have shown themselves. It isn’t ironic that as I step into the beauty of my life I also have stepped deeper into understanding how the pain of my past has manifested and is still manifesting.

I’m now in the place to explore these deeper layers. I’m now in the place to not only notice, but to also accept and release. It’s an amazing place to be.

 

My view, at work :)
My view, at work 🙂

 

Giving and receiving

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Today a homeless woman with three children reached out me. We were sitting in the library, my daughter playing with one of her daughters. She told me how she had left her husband, leaving her and her three children homeless and she didn’t know where they were going to get food today.

I didn’t have much to give, our family is struggling too. So many families are struggling right now. I wanted to help her though. We had some fruit in our car that we had just received. It was fruit that was supposed to last us through the week. We have other food at home though and I knew what our dinner would be, and that I am blessed to have a kitchen to cook that food in.

I pulled my daughter aside and told her that her new friend and her family didn’t have any food and that I was going to share what we had in the car with them. She agreed. I checked out our library books, went to our car and brought the fruit up.

I gave it to the mama and told her where it had come from. I told her this was all I had to give and I wished so deeply I had more. Tears welled up in her eyes and she thanked me. We didn’t speak another word until my daughter and I left and she mouthed the words “Thank you” to me again, with tears in her eyes.

My heart has been breaking for this family since we left them this afternoon. I am grateful that this mama reached out to me, and I am grateful that I was able to offer her something. I am mostly grateful for the gift she gave me.

You see, I’ve spend the last several days cranky. I was complaining to my husband this morning about how I’m so bored with the food we’ve been eating, how tired I am of cooking, how frustrated I am with the constant dishes and laundry and cleaning. In the last few days I have complained about how I don’t like our dining room or living room furniture, how our bed “needs” new bedding. I’ve been ungrateful for what I have, seeing so clearly what I do not have and wanting, grasping for more, more and more instead of being satisfied with the blessings we have.

We have a kitchen, dishes, a working dishwasher, a working stove and food. We have clothes, a working washing machine and a working dryer. In fact we have an over abundance of clothes, enough to get each of us through a couple weeks of me not doing laundry. We have multiple bedrooms in our home and we have comfortable beds to sleep in and sheets and blankets and pillows to rest our heads on. I’m in a beautiful, healthy and loving marriage and we have an amazing, healthy and wonderful daughter.

It is easy to get wrapped up in lack though. It’s easy for us each to forget all the abundance that we truly have in our lives. It is easy to see all that we don’t have, all that we want, all that we hunger for. It’s easy to tell ourselves the story of how our life would be better, happier, shinier if only we had this or that. It’s easy to sink deeper and deeper into a sense a lack, even when on paper and to others, our life looks amazing and perfect.

With practice, we can step into a place of abundance. We can see all that we do have. We can become satiated with what is, what we have in our life now, this moment. We can learn to unravel the myths and see them for what they are: stories, pieces of fiction. We can feel, deep in our souls, the abundance of our lives, even when on paper and perhaps even to others, it may not look or sound all that amazing.

I’m grateful for the family I met today. I am grateful that I was able to help them,  in some small way and that in return they helped me a very profound way. I am grateful I was able to offer them food and that in return, they offered me my Soul.

Acknowledging growth

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I have days, like many do I imagine, where I’m just plain tired. I’m tired of constantly growing and changing. I’m tired of shedding layers. I’m tired of putting time in practices that keep me centered and grounded. I’m tired of healing. I’m tired of doing.

Days that I’m just plain tired. Days where I know deep in my Soul how my practices benefit me and also know deep in my Soul that it is time to rest and replenish and give myself space to be where I am in those moments.

Then I also have days where my practices are effortless. Where I can snap myself out of a bad mood by simply taking in a slow, womb-deep breath and then slowly exhaling, releasing the frustration and fear and anxiety that was building up. Days where things that in the past would have sent me  in a fast and anxious downward spiral of fear and stress, bounce off me as “oh well. I guess I’ll do this instead.” The days where I hear the messages my body or the Universe is sending me, where I acknowledge those messages and react to them in self-loving and world-loving ways.

Days where, when I step back, I can see the fruition of all my practices. Days where I see the joy on people’s faces when they spend time with me. Days where I am able to deeply touch another soul and open to having that soul deeply touch me.

I had one of those second days on Friday. I was having a wonderful Skype session with a participant in one of my e-courses and at the 50 minute mark, my laptop shut itself down. Completely turned off. When I was mid-sentence. At first I thought we had lost power in the house, but then quickly realized that the lights were still on  in the room, the wireless router was still blinking at me. Weird, I thought. I restarted the laptop and reconnected with the person I was talking to.

My laptop shut down again, this time, in the middle of her sentence. What the hell, I said to the Universe and laughed. I reconnected a third time, and my laptop shut down again. I took a deep grounding breath. I slowly exhaled. I said, “I am listening” and restarted my laptop a fourth time. This fourth time, once I reconnected, I asked her if she had anything she had left to talk about. Miraculously my laptop hasn’t shut itself down since.

My observation of the technical difficulties, and my reaction, is that aaaaahhhhhhh. I have transformed. If this same sequence of events had happened one year ago, or even six months ago, I would have started to spin into panic. I would have spun into feelings of worthlessness and not-good-enoughness and told myself that age old story of how I can never do or get anything right.

That didn’t happen Friday. Friday I laughed. Friday, after the third shut-down I slowed down, grounded and rooted myself, and opened myself to listening. I released my own agenda and thoughts that I felt compelled to express. I listened. To the Universe, to my body, to my client.

I listened.

I have released so many of those stories of not being good enough, of never being able to do anything right, or not having worth or value. I have found myself in these last few years in ways I never thought possible. It’s been an amazing journey. I look forward to continuing it and excited to see what transformation I will notice in October or next May, or whenever it is the Universe feels I need to know and see and listen.

I will continue to transform in expected and unexpected ways. It will be terrifying and beautiful and exhilarating and calming. I can continue my practices, continue to release, continue to come into Being. The true beauty of this is, I never have to get it right. I can continue to be human, continue to make mistakes, and know, this is part of the journey, part of the practice, part of the transformation.

Lifetime practices. Always.